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07/26/2013

Zero dollars down, Simple Choice and Jump? T-Mobile must be downright crazy! Either that, or it's a carrier struggling to make a serious impact on a market dominated by two juggernauts -- juggernauts who also came out with early upgradeplans of their own within a week of Jump's debut. T-Mobile's "back at it," according to its press material, dropping the entry price on a slew of devices down to zero, effectively spreading out the payments over 24 months. All told, the promotion includes smartphones, tablets and hotspots, and is open to folks who are "well-qualified" (check your credit statements if you have any questions on that front). The deal starts tomorrow and runs for a "limited time." Unsurprisingly, there's also some fine print attached (e.g., the 32GB and 64GB iPhone 5 isn't covered). The carrier's site can break down all of that for you, and there's also more info to be had in a press release after the break.

No one took ownership of Google Reader internally because it wasn’t a top priority for Larry Page and his inner circle of lieutenants. And if you aren’t working on something that the boss cares about, then what’s the point?

Via: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

There's a very simple corporate reason for why Google Reader was shut down earlier this month: No one internally deemed it important enough to even work on, much less save.

The decision had little to do with consumers — the RSS reader was very popular with a core set of power users — and much more to do with corporate politics. At Google, Chief Executive Larry Page and his inner circle of lieutenants, known as the "L Team," simply did not view Google Reader as an important strategic priority. Internally, it became obvious that despite Google Reader's loyal fan base, working on the project was not going to get the attention of Page, several sources close to the company told BuzzFeed.

While the company said Google Reader was shut down because of a decline in usage, a major reason for that was owed to the fact that the project lacked an engineering lead, in part because no one stepped up to the task and because Google leadership wasn't actively looking for one. Even when Google Reader was still public, without a leader it was functionally no longer a live project at Google, with engineers focusing more on Page's larger projects like Android, Chrome, Google Plus, and Search.

"We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We're sad too," Google software engineer Alan Green wrote in the farewell post for Google Reader. "There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we're pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience."

Google Reader began as an experiment under Google's "20% time" policy — which allows Google employees to devote 20% of their time to personal projects. It very quickly became extremely popular among a small subset of power users, but never reached the critical mass of Gmail or Android, for instance.

Google teams, like those at other tech companies, have product managers, but much of the company's leadership comes from its engineers. As a result, many product decisions come from and are executed by engineers, as was the case with Google Reader. Eventually, as Google Reader's importance declined internally, the engineering leads — the de facto leaders of the project — were moved onto more high-priority projects. (By the time Reader was shut down, the team didn't even have a product manager or full-time engineer, according to AllThingsD.)

07/25/2013

As if the Google TV and Chromecast platforms (which are coexisting, if you hadn't heard) weren't enough, the Wall Street Journal reports there may be more living room focused projects brewing in Mountain View. According to sources, former Android head Andy Rubin demonstrated a Roku-style set-top box for partners at CES that had Hangouts as its main feature, with a video camera and motion sensor built-in for videoconferencing -- something Logitech tried once with its ill-fated Revue TV Cam, shown above. The report claims the box, capable of running Android apps, games and services like Netflix or Pandora, was scheduled to launch at I/O, but it's unknown whether or not it's still in development. Recent WSJ rumors have suggested Google is looking into IPTV and its own Android game system, so even as one mystery is revealed others pop up to take its place.

The Sony Cyber-shot RX100 is a seriously hot camera, but its understated black-box body won’t win a pizzazz contest. The Hasselblad Stellar is the same camera as the Sony RX100, gussied up with fancy accoutrements such as a zebra-wood grip, ...

This week on the New Tech Forum, DataStax CEO Billy Bosworth offers an incisive essay on a key difference in relational and NoSQL mindsets. Bosworth has spent many years in the database and development world, and has become a passionate proponent of NoSQL databases such as Apache's Cassandra, the open source NoSQL database around which his company is built.

This week on the New Tech Forum, DataStax CEO Billy Bosworth offers an incisive essay on a key difference in relational and NoSQL mindsets. Bosworth has spent many years in the database and development world, and has become a passionate proponent of NoSQL databases such as Apache's Cassandra, the open source NoSQL database around which his company is built.